Global warming is a hoax, December data show

The new Beck-Hannity-Limbaugh index crunches monthly weather data from the three Fox TV commentators' hometowns to determine whether global warming is true or if it's a hoax.

As Fox News commentators once again this year argue that heavy winter weather on the US East Coast is evidence that the Earth is not warming, Transition Voice has developed the Beck-Hannity-Limbaugh Global Warming Truth Index.

Using current local weather to give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down to the whole theory of global climate change will no longer require talent on loan from God. Now it will be a matter of science.

Cold, snowy winter raises questions

Recently, Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson, who has dubbed global warming “a religion, and one with particularly fervent believers,” declared that heavy winter storms on the US East Coast were proof that climate change was a liberal hoax.

This follows on from last winter, when fellow Fox commentators Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity said the same about a snowstorm that hit the nation’s capital in February. As Hannity put it:

And tonight’s “Meltdown” is brought to you by the D.C. snow storm, you know, the storm that dumped about two feet of snow on the Washington area over the weekend causing thousands of power outages and keeping many people home from work today. And it’s the most severe winter storm in years, which would seem to contradict Al Gore’s hysterical global warming theories.

And, committed as they are to empirical proof, these TV personalities insist on judging global climate by the weather outside their own studio windows.

Using the new Beck-Hannity-Limbaugh Index, now Transition Voice readers can do them one better and judge global climate by the weather in the three towns where Glenn, Sean and Rush were born. It’s a fair and balanced approach.

The science behind the numbers

A fusion of entertainment and enlightenment, the Global Warming Truth Index combines average temperatures from the hometowns of Fox News commentators Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh. Then, the index compares the current month’s temperatures in the hometowns to historical averages for all three cities. All weather data comes from regional offices of the National Weather Service.

Using this methodology, combined Fox commentator hometown temperatures in December 2010 were 5.6 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than in the past. Based on this data, the inescapable conclusion is that…

“Since it was cooler in December 2010 in the three TV commentators’ hometowns than in Decembers past, it means that global warming is clearly a hoax,” said Erik Curren, publisher of Transition Voice.

The Beck-Hannity-Limbaugh Global Warming Truth Index will be calculated every month by a grid of Cray XT5 Jaguar supercomputers housed in the Transition Voice data center, a blast-proof bunker carved into solid granite 500 feet underneath Thomas Jefferson’s head on Mt. Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

“It may indeed turn out that some month in the future is warmer than the historical average in the three Fox TV personalities’ hometowns,” said Curren. “In that case, the theory of global warming will be validated, at least for the following 30 days. Of course, the data could go either way. But hey, that’s science.”

If you care about climate, you have to talk about oil. Indeed, maybe peak oil would be a way to get creating an economy beyond fossil fuels back on the national agenda. As to Beck, even a broken clock is correct twice a day.

Glenn Beck you are 100% correct that global warming is a big lie.
Al Gore could not his car in a parking lot.
He is wrong to accept all these prizes for his illusions of grandeau.

We have scientists that over hundreds of years have worked hard to find the truth.

The scientists wanted to check on the Serbian scientist M. Milankovitch’s orbital cycles
of planet earth that cause the cycle of Glacial ages and interglacial ages.
He calculated that every 100,000 years we had “glacial ages.”

The scientist went to Antartcia, Lake Vostak, Russian area to take ice cores from the ancient lake.

The ice cores show 8 such rediculous “Al Gore hockey stick presentations”, in the last 850,000 years records shown in the ice cores

John–thanks for your comment. Since I’m not a qualified climatologist, I won’t put forth any analysis on scientific evidence pro or con. I’ll just say that the academy of science of every major nation on Earth, from the US and the UK to China and Russia, have agreed that climate change is real, that it’s a threat to human life on Earth and that it’s mostly caused by humans burning fossil fuels and cutting down trees.

So the issue is settled. No more need to argue about the science. Now, it’s time to stop the dangerous delay and start taking serious action to protect ourselves from run away climate hell.

As to Fox News personalities, we regret that they still feel the need to spread misinformation on climate and we will continue to mock their silly antics as long as we need to.

Great site you have here. I have given up worrying about the shock jocks who spread lies for fame and money. The only way people are going to move on climate change is when it starts destroying their way of life. If as they say, it will be too late by then, fine. The survival of the human species is not mandatory.

Bloomer–Thanks for the nice compliment! We’re glad to see you here. Sometimes I fear you may be right about people not caring about climate until it’s too late. But then I guess I can’t help myself from trying to convince them anyway. Not sure if you have kids, but I want to do what I can so they’ll have a livable world too. Regards, Erik

These are powerful images from NASA about warming. Hard to argue with them if you really believe in science. And the hometowns are listed on the chart: Glenn Beck, Mt. Vernon, WA; Sean Hannity, NYC; Rush Limbaugh, Cape Girardeau, MO. They’re all across the country so I guess the weather in all three gives some kind of slice of what the continental US is experiencing weather-wise. But of course that does say very little about global climate. Unless you live in the Fox News universe of course!

Oh yes, sorry. That is clear enough now that you point it out and thanks for doing so. It’s interesting that the 2009 map shows a cooler trend in MO, and perhaps WA…hard to say on the computer I’m sitting at now. Overall there’s a warming trend over a decade, though.

It is still the case that winter snow packs melt faster in the Spring and do not accumulate over the course of years. We all have the experience of melting ice cubes to make cold beverages, and we can see the cold water come off the ice into the lower parts of the warm beverage, especially when there are food dyes involved. This is science. Look up “heat of fusion”. Thank you for this lovely reminder that CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL.

Nice analogy which helps clarify the science, Zarka. And as glaciers continue to melt, we can expect to see other effects like flooding and erosion in short term, and then, once the glaciers are gone, the disappearance of the water supplies for many areas.

I’ve read on various websites that this cold winter in the north east actually does fit in with the effects Global Warming (although this should probably just be called climate change as the term tricks the less sensible, as evidenced by Fox). What happens is warmer temperatures in the arctic weaken the circumpolar winds (caused by the Arctic Oscillation). These winds normally keep cold air trapped in the Arctic, but when they weaken, they allow cold air to spill south, dropping temperatures in lower latitudes. A similar pattern occurs in the southern hemisphere, which keeps places like New Zealand warmer than they typically would be if the pattern were not present.

This actually makes quite a bit of sense if you’ve read anything about polar weather dynamics, but I wouldn’t put it past any fox “journalist” to study or even acknowledge this.

Barry — Thanks for this, I’ve heard it before and it does sound plausible. Since climate change can bring all sorts of new weather patterns, I wonder if the name “global warming” is misleading. I know the White House is trying to get “global climate disruption out there.” Others have talked about “global weirding.” And marketing guru Seth Godin suggests “atmosphere cancer.”

Use the term ‘global climate change’, and not ‘global warming’. This will avoid inane stuff like this. When something is breaking down, it behaves in erratic ways, just like climate is. Hot, cold, sweltering, snowy.